Most people think of Respondus as a tool for converting questions from MS Word to a format that can be published to a course management system. What some users don’t realize is that Respondus can also be used to convert an existing online exam to a word processing format.

Why would you want to do this? Here are four scenarios:

A student missed the online exam and the instructor prefers to deliver the makeup exam from a printed copy.

A visually impaired student wants a printed copy of the exam that uses a large font.

An instructor wants to do a post-exam review in the classroom and would like a printed copy of the exam and answer key.

An instructor suspects that someone other than the intended student completed an online exam. So the instructor has the student retake the exam using a printed copy.

The steps to convert an online exam to MS Word format (or rich-text) are easy:

At this point the instructor can choose from three settings: Exam, Exam with Answer Key, or Answer Key Only. It is also possible to adjust the formatting of the exam, such as the font size that is used. Finally, the exam can be printed directly from Respondus or saved to MS Word, rich-text, or .txt format.